


Now I Know

by runsinthefamily



Series: Empty Arms [7]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:36:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 4,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runsinthefamily/pseuds/runsinthefamily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The A-Z prompt thingie is making the rounds, and it seemed like an ideal time to get back to Empty!Arms Garrett. This jumps around a lot, time-wise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A is for Always

“Yours now.” His father’s hand is febrile and trembling in his own, a dry clutch of sticks. “Promise me. Keep them …” Malcolm’s voice fails him, but his grip is still strong.

Garrett swallows against the ache in his throat. He has made this promise a hundred times in the last three days. “I’ll keep them safe.”

“Bethany,” Malcolm pulls, insistent. “Don’t … let them …”

“I promise.”

“Good boy,” said Malcolm. “Best of me. Of … your mother. Proud.” He is silent then, eyes closed, breath rasping. Garrett holds onto his hand, hunched on the wooden chair, back aching.

Hours later, Malcolm twitches, opens his fever-bright eyes. Garrett supports his head, holds the cup carefully for him to drink. Malcolm watches him over the brim, brows creased in anxiety. “Watch them,” he says, insistent, when the cup is gone. “Yours. Your job.”

“I promise,” says Garrett, as he always does. “I will.”


	2. B is for Betrayal

They see the King die. Carver lets out a shout of horror and grief and Garrett spins in time to see the ogre throw the figure in bright gold armor to the ground. Carver takes two steps forward before Garrett seizes the back straps of his armor and pulls.

“Let go!” Carver shouts, flailing. “The King! The Wardens!”

“This battle is over!” Garrett flings Carver up against a crumbling block of masonry to get him out of the way and guts a hurlock. Maker, they stink, and their foul black blood is everywhere. “Loghain has quit the field, Cailan is dead. We have to go. We have to get home.”

“Desert?” Carver looks shocked and pale and very young. “That’s treason, that’s a hanging offense.”

Garrett pokes his head around the corner, sees no immediate threat, and drags his little brother toward the streambed. It leads to the river, which leads to the bridge, which is the fastest way out of the Wilds. “Ask me if I care.”

“We can’t just let them win,” says Carver. “They -“

“They _have_ won,” says Garrett. “Think about where they’ll go next.”

Carver gets paler. “Lothering.”

“Bright lad,” says Garrett, because he knows it will get Carver riled.

“Shut up.” Carver stumbles on a rock, bats away Garrett’s offered hand. “We’re still betraying our oaths. Doesn’t that bother you, even a little?”

“No,” says Garrett. He falls back a bit, to keep Carver in sight, to watch for ‘spawn coming up behind them. “Not even a little.”


	3. C is for Cold

He and Carver spar in the shade of a maple while Father takes Bethy out into the bare dirt of the fallow field to practice magic. Carver is particularly sullen and inattentive, sneaking glances out at Father, the way their heads bow together, his hand on Bethy’s shoulder.

“She needs to learn,” says Garrett.

“I know that!” Carver says. “I’m not stupid.”

Garrett sighs. “Get your guard up. Higher. Higher. Maker’s breath, Carver. Like this.” He reaches out, corrects Carver’s arms.

Carver wrenches away. “I can do it!” His irate twelve year old face is a perfect argument for a nice, brisk slapping.

Garrett pinches his nose. “You’re the one who wanted to learn the sword,” he begins, patiently.

“Not from _you_ ,” Carver says, tossing the practice wood to the ground. “You learned from Da, why can’t I?”

“You are,” says Garrett. “But while he’s busy, there’s no reason why you can’t go on learning.”

Carver folds his arms, stares out into the field.

Bethany lifts her hands, fingers crooked. Their father adjusts them for her. She bites her lip and then a sudden burst of fire leaps out of her palms. Father claps his hands and laughs, the rich rumble of his voice ringing out across the ground.

“That’s something I’ll never share with him,” says Garrett, carefully. “It makes me a bit jealous.”

Carver stiffens. “I’m not jealous,” he says. “I don’t want to be a mage.”

“How about a human being?” Garrett says, before he can stop himself.

“How about you’re a jerk?”

“How about you’re a selfish little tit?”

Carver hits him, a sneaky little blow in the gut and underneath his anger and outrage, Garrett is momentarily impressed with the force behind the blow. Then he’s blocking, blocking, snatching at Carver’s wrist and twisting it up and back. “Say sorry,” he grunts, only half avoiding Carver’s stomp at his insole. “Ow, you little … say sorry! Say uncle!”

“The Void I will!” Carver writhes like an eel, ignoring the pain in his captured arm. Their feet scuff across the ground.

The blast of cold is like a slap, taking his breath away, shocking his hands open. He lets go of Carver and hunches away from the sudden snow, the sharp little crystals of ice. It dies as quickly as it sprang up, leaving Bethany standing with her hands out, frost dissipating from her fingers. Father stands behind her, arms crossed.

“Well done, Bethany. Nice control.”

Garrett shivers a bit, and shakes snow out of his hair. “You’re getting good at the whole frost thing, Bethy.”

She beams at him.

Carver is hunched over, not looking at them.

“Carver?” says Bethany. “Did I hurt you?” Her sunny smile vanishes into worry.

Carver straightens, turns, and flings a snowball right into Garrett’s face.


	4. D is for Devotion

Anders slips in the muck of yet another sewer and Garrett puts out a hand to steady him.

Garrett steps away from the downed spider, sides heaving, legs wobbly. The blue of Anders’ magic envelops him and he takes a deep breath.

Anders looks up from the latest chokedamp victim to find Garrett holding out a steaming tin cup of tea.

At night, when the nightmares come, there is always a pair of arms, a sleepy voice urging him awake, lips to kiss the tears away.

“Stay.”

“I will.”


	5. E is for Easy

It’s easy with Isabela. She makes it easy, with her innuendos and her laugh and her sweet, unspoken acceptance She chucks Bethany under her chin and charms Leandra and drags him off on wild goose chases that always end poorly and that he realizes later always coincide with days that he feels nearly suffocated by the city and the expedition and the constant weight on his shoulders.

When she shows up at his mansion, not long after Bethany sends her first letter from the Gallows, they are in his bedroom before he quite realizes it, flinging knives and wrenching at laces and he doesn’t worry, doesn’t think, just buries himself in her. Isabela laughs when she comes, and so does he.

He loves her, but he isn’t in love with her, and that’s easy, too. She tells him about other conquests as they lie in his bed, funny stories and sexy ones, tales of the Rose and the Pearl and a place called Serene’s in Cumberland, where she claims there are mage whores, trained in the use of magic for pleasure. That one has to be a lie, but it’s an entertaining one.

When his suppressed, stamped-on, smothered feelings for Anders are suddenly, gloriously returned, and they come into the Hanged Man the next evening conspicuously together, conspicuously late and tousled and unable-to-stop-smiling, she is the first one to grin and whistle and wish them well. She jogs her knee against his as the cards are dealt out and winks and then bursts out laughing at his ridiculous blush.

And when he is laying on the floor of the Viscount’s palace, Anders glowing blue and Merrill weeping and Varric grim, and Isabela leans over him, clasping his hand in hers, her face angry and pained and afraid, and asks him _what was he thinking, almost dying for her, how could he do that_ , he smiles.

“It was easy,” he says.


	6. F is for Forgetting

“Before Amaranthine, there was … damn. Was that the year Mother spent working for the inn?”

“How would I know?” Bethany leans across the table and filches his tankard. “I was only three.”

“Ok, there was that farm outside the town where they made paper -“

“That, I remember,” Bethany interrupts. “It stank dreadfully.”

“And then the inn?”

Varric sighs. “Well, maybe I don’t need the details. ‘He traveled a lot as a child.’”

“Alright, but I should remember.” Garrett frowns down at his hands. “I should know this.”

“Why?” Bethany drinks and grimaces.

“You can’t know who you are unless you know who you’ve been,” says Aveline. “Stop drinking that, Maker only knows what’s in it.”

He can’t let go of it, not even as they walk home together through Kirkwall’s dark but never quiet streets. Bethany is humming something softly and snickering every now and then. Some dirty song Isabela taught her, no doubt. He’s still not entirely sure about that pirate.

 _Amaranthine, and then?_ Garrett rubs at a nick on his right forefinger, relic of their latest tangle with bandits along the coast.

“Hey.” Bethany elbows him. “Stop that.”

“Why can’t I remember?” he asks, frustrated.

“Because it doesn’t matter,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Not everything matters. We remember the bits that do.”

“Do we?” He looks up. “Sometimes I can’t … I think about him, and his face, it isn’t …”

She doesn’t ask which one he means, only sighs and steps closer to him, nudging until he puts his arm around her shoulders. “Me, too,” she says.


	7. G is for Grace

“What made you fall in love with mother?”

Malcolm pauses, wiping his brow. “I’m not sure you want to know the answer to that.”

“Ew, Da,” says Garrett.

Malcolm laughs and bends to the plow again. “She brought grace into my life,” he says.

“What does that mean?”

“Someday, if you’re lucky, you’ll find out.”

***

Leandra turns around and around in the main hall of the estate, her hands pressed to her breastbone and Garrett sees, clearly, the girl who had grown up here. She’s smiling, ever so slightly, and the lift and swirl of her skirt makes her look as though she is dancing.

***

Garrett comes home to find her sitting with Sandal at the table, watching him carefully etch a flat disc of silverite.

“Hello, darling,” she says, rising to kiss him on the cheek.

“It’s good of you to stay with him,” says Garrett, nodding at Sandal.

She gives him a look. “Sandal is a very interesting person,” she says. “Perhaps if you managed to spend some time with him, instead of snatching up his rune work and then rushing off again, you’d see it.”

“Right,” says Garrett, chastened. “How are you, Sandal?”

“Enchantment,” says Sandal.

“Right,” says Garrett.

As he walks away, he hears Sandal’s voice again, rising and falling in conversation, and then Leandra laughs.

***

“Your mother is so lovely, Hawke.”

“Your mother is a gem. Wish mine had been _half_ so nice.”

“I should be writing _her_ story.”

“Tell Leandra I’ll be by for dinner. Out of uniform, like she requested.”

“Your mother is … a unique woman.”

“Yer mother is a very special lady, Hawke.”

“Your mother is extraordinary. It couldn’t have been easy, loving an apostate.”

***

“Mother,” says Garrett, lifting her body - not her body from the dank earth of this warren.

“I knew you would come,” she says and smiles, Maker, _smiles_ at him, her filmy eyes seeking his face.

He doesn’t know what he’s saying, he can’t make sense of this. The shape of her is all wrong, too slender, too short, her skin as cold as the grave.

“My little boy has become so strong,” she says.

He looks at her face, tries not to see the rest of her. When he opens his mouth, nothing comes out.

She lifts the hands that aren’t hers, fingers curved with familiar elegance, and cups his face.

“I love you. You’ve always made me so proud.”

The breath leaves her in a little sigh, and she slumps, graceless, to the ground.


	8. H is for Happy Endings

“They don’t exist, Daisy,” Varric says. His knife flicks and bits of quill patter on the table. “Not in real life.”

“You put them in your stories, though.”

“Well. Stories are lies.”

“No, they’re not.” Merrill puts down her tankard with a clunk. “They might not always be strictly accurate, but that doesn’t make them lies. There’s a hundred stories about Fen’harel, and some of them contradict one another, but they’re not lies. They’re just true in a different way.” She sounds different when she speaks as a Keeper. “I think you do believe in happy endings. You wouldn’t write them otherwise.”

Garrett can hear the smile in Varric’s voice. “You might have something there.”

“Will I get one, then?” Garrett asks.

“Thought you’d gone to sleep,” says Varric.

Garrett turns his head on his folded arms to look at Varric. “You keep writing stories about me. Can I have a happy ending?”

Varric tilts his head, his smile becoming fond and a bit rueful. “I’ll see what I can do.”


	9. I is for Invitiation

Truthfully, Garrett never minded Isabela’s dirty graffiti, or the way Merrill left bits of plants and rubbish under the seats when she visited. After he asked to read Anders’ manifesto, he began to find copies of it everywhere, variously scribbled on and edited. Varric left ink stains on the furniture. Aveline brought food every time she came, in proper Ferelden tradition, always wrapped in rough brown linen and tied with sturdy string. Bodahn saved each piece of cloth, Garrett discovered one day while poking about in the pantry, and the stack of irregularly trimmed fabric made him smile. Fenris rarely visited but there was an empty bottle of Aggregio in a cupboard in the kitchen from a late-night conversation in front of Garrett’s fireplace for a change.

He treasured it all. He wished they would come more often, leave more of themselves behind. When he and his mother had moved in here, he’d told them all they were welcome, any time, any reason. If he’d thought any of them would have said yes, he would have invited them to live with him. Maker knew the estate had enough rooms, giant, hollow, echo-y place that it was.

Bodahn, socially aware in that rock-hard way that only Orzimmar-bred dwarves could manage, had ensconced himself and his son in the servant’s quarters, and declined all attempts by Garrett to get the two of them to sit with them at meals.

“Come back to the estate,” Garrett said, each time he wrapped up some bit of business, before everyone scattered again. Mostly they would, no matter what the motley arrangement was. Once it had been Fenris, Merrill, and Anders, and they’d woken the neighbors with their shouting. Garrett had only been sorry when they left.

Eventually, regardless of invitation or company or Garrett’s plying with brandy, they left. He closed the door behind them, patted his leg for the dog, and went upstairs, alone.


	10. J is for Justice

“The law applies to everyone!” Aveline is irate, and so is Anders, leaning at one another over Varric’s table as if they are about to armwrestle. They’ve been at it for a quarter of a glass, now, and Garrett has decided that holding his tongue is the better part of courage. Varric is hunched over the latest proofs of Swords and Shields, attempting to ignore the lot of them.

“But it doesn’t,” says Anders. “Can you tell me, honestly, that your guards treat a theft in Darktown the same as one up there?” He jabs a finger at the roof, toward the unseen heights of Hightown.

“We certainly try,” says Aveline, bristling. “It’s difficult to investigate a crime when the victim runs away from you.”

“Are they supposed to trust the guard? Jeven might be gone, but graft and corruption cast a long shadow. You haven’t exactly been leaping at the chance to repair relations with the community.”

“What community?” Aveline throws up her hands in exasperation. “You can’t be sure from one day to the next who lives where, or if they’re actually poor or Carta eyes, or whether they’re just looking for a chance to cut your purse. I have to pay double wages for the Darktown beat just to get guards to take the damn assignment, and I’ll be damned if I know what good it’s doing.”

“You could recruit there,” says Anders. “I would have thought that you would be glad to get more Fereldens in the guard.”

“Recruit?” Aveline lets out an incredulous laugh. “Most of those people can hardly lift their heads, let alone a sword.”

“They’re weak because they aren’t _eating_ , because they can’t find _jobs_ , because no one will _hire_ them,” Anders rises slowly to his feet, apparently unaware that blue has begun to leak from around his eyes, “not even their countrymen.” His voice deepens, develops the hint of an echo.

Aveline drops a hand to her sword. Varric looks up from his editing.

“Anders,” says Garrett, and lays a hand on his arm. The suede is thin and worn shiny in spots, the bandages holding the patchwork pieces together ragged. He needs a new coat. “Love.”

Anders looks down and for a moment Garrett is looking at Justice. Then Anders blinks the Fade glow away and relaxes minutely. He looks to Aveline. “I think they might surprise you,” he says. “If you gave them a chance.”

Her face loses its steely determination, her brows lift a little. “Your suggestion may have merit,” she says. “It isn’t an easy problem. Give me credit for trying, at least.”

Anders slumps into his chair. “Sometimes trying isn’t good enough,” he says, but his gaze is no longer on her. He is looking at his hands. He’s been doing that a lot lately.

“Maybe we should go home,” says Garrett. His hand is still resting lightly on Anders’ arm and he gives it a little encouraging squeeze.

Anders is silent most of the way back to the estate, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around himself. _A new coat_ , Garrett thinks, and cannot pretend, even to himself, that it will fix anything.


	11. K is for Kissing

“Your best ever kiss,” says Merrill. The paper crown is a bit awry on her braids, but her ears are holding it up. “Um … Hawke!”

Hawke smiles a smile that he knows is exceedingly silly, even before Isabela rolls her eyes and Aveline hides a grin in her ale. Anders looks at him sidelong, a smile hovering around his own lips.

“The second kiss Anders ever gave me,” he says.

“What, not the first?” Anders asks.

Hawke shakes his head a little. “I didn’t let myself believe you really meant it until you kissed me again.”

“I,” announces Isabela, “am going to be sick.”

“It’s romantic,” Merrill coos, pulling the crown off and passing it along to Sebastian, who takes it good-naturedly and drapes it over his ruddy locks.

Anders gives in to his smile and then they’re grinning goofily at one another across the corner of the table, uncaring of the company.

“Your most -” Sebastian begins, and is interrupted by Varric.

“I want to hear more about this first kiss,” he says. “Hawke won’t spill, Anders, how about giving me your side of the story.”

Anders colours a little. “I don’t think so,” he says.

“Ooooh, racy,” says Isabela. “Was it more than just a kiss, perhaps?”

“It was,” says Hawke, to Anders. “Much more.”


	12. L is for Lying

“You don’t say,” says Malcolm, while Leandra clutches a reluctant, fussing Carver and Garrett snugs Bethy in tight against his side. Malcolm leans forward, eager. “We’ve met a lot of folk today. None of them looked like apostates.”

“None seemed hurried, or nervous?” The man in the bright armor has his helm tucked under his arm. His face seems kind, until you get to the eyes. “Perhaps had a particularly long walking stick?”

Garrett remembers her very well, a woman of about thirty in a dirty dress. Her hands had been as soft as dough when he’d helped her into the cart. She’d wept a little when Leandra had given her an apple.

“Not so’s I noticed,” says Malcolm. He half reaches out as the Templar begins to turn away. “If we do, where should we …?”

“Any chantry,” says the Templar. “They’ll send word. Good day, serahs.” He nudges his horse into motion. His gauntleted hand comes out as he passes the cart and Garrett does not flinch when it descends to tousle his hair. He even manages a grin.

“Maker bless your silver tongue,” says Leandra when the Templars round the hill and disappear from sight.

“You lied,” Bethy pipes up from under Garrett’s arm.

“I did,” says Malcolm. “I lied _very well_. And why did I lie?”

“Because it was Templars,” says Carver.

“Because of the lady,” says Bethany.

“For us,” says Garrett.

“All of you, correct,” says Malcolm. “Especially Garrett.”

***

Anders lies all the time. Garrett can usually tell, even right from the start, when Anders tells the whopper about leaving the Wardens because of his cat. It doesn’t make him love Anders any less. Apostates lie. It’s only surprising how bad Anders is at it.

“Just some friends,” he says when Garrett drops by the clinic and steps aside to let three wary, stone faced women by.

“A fever, nothing serious, but I wanted to be sure,” about a thin, pale boy with wounded eyes and nervous hands huddled in Anders’ own cot.

“I’m needed at the clinic tonight,” not an hour after talking about how slow things were now that the refugees were beginning to leave Darktown.

He lies about small things, too, about his favorite colour and whether he likes lilacs and just how well he and Isabela knew each other back in the day.

“She happened to be there,” says Anders, waving a hand.

“I offered him a place on my boat,” says Isabela. “He’d accepted, too. But he never showed, and the tide was changing …” she shrugs.

He lies about his scars, “Seduced the wrong lady. Her husband had a whip fetish.” About the Warden Commander, “I suppose you could have called us friends. Not that I was particularly special, she was friends with everyone.” About his real name, “It’s unpronounceable." "It means something dirty in the Trade tongue." "I’ve forgotten it.”

And he lies when Garrett wakes him from thrashing, mumbling nightmares in the middle of the night. “Warden thing,” he says. “No help for it, I suppose.”

Garrett tucks Anders against his chest, hand splayed against the flogging scars between Anders’ shoulderblades, and does not mention that the frantic pleading had been in the high, thin tones of a boy, _please ser, no, I won’t, I won’t._

“He’s lying, you know,” says Varric, watching Anders pick through another pile of disgusting refuse in the bowels of Kirkwall’s sewers.

“I know,” says Garrett.


	13. M is for Mercy

"How can a sword be merciful?" Merrill wonders. 

She's going through Garrett's chest of memories, as his mother puts it, and has heaved out Aveline's old shield. Well, Wesley's shield, really. Garrett runs a finger down the insignia, remembering the kick in the gut sensation of seeing the Sword and thinking _Really? Really? Darkspawn weren't enough, the Maker has to send along a Templar, too?_

"I don't know," he says out loud. "Generally, mercy is what makes you stop waving them around."

"I suppose if you were taken over by an evil spirit, you might change your mind." She looks up and gives him a smile. "Don't crease your brow, lethallin, that's not going to happen to me."

As he always does, Garrett sidesteps the whole question of Merrill's dubious dealings. "As the Chantry tells it, the fellow who burned Andraste felt bad about it halfway through and stabbed her through the heart to end her pain. Sword, mercy."

Merrill squinches her nose up. "Why are all your stories so horrible? I mean, not yours, Hawke, yours can be quite funny, but all your human stories about your gods."

"Yours are full of light and kindness, are they?" Garrett rolls Bonebreaker over onto her side to get at her tummy. She throws her head back in doggy bliss as he rubs her roughly under her forelegs, making ridiculous smooching noises.

"Welll ... not always, no," Merrill concedes. 

"I don't think gods are much concerned with mercy, on the whole," Garrett says. "That's a human sort of job. Elven, too. And dwarf, and er, Qunari I guess, though I can't say I've ever seen one of them showing any sign of -"

"A job for people," Merrill says firmly. "Yes, I think so, too."

 

 _Please,_ Garrett thinks, sticking his sword into another slight elvhen body. The grip, blood-slick, twists in his hands and he nearly loses his balance wrenching the blade free. _Please, no more, no more._

"Hawke!" 

He wheels, sucking air, and just stops himself from cleaving Varric in two. 

Varric hardly seems to notice. He's covered in soot and his face is half-masked in blood. "It's over. It's - it's over."

Hawke lifts dull eyes and looks across the once-pleasant mountain glade. "They wouldn't - why wouldn't they -" 

"Who knows?" Varric coughs once, harshly. "Maybe it wasn't just the Keeper that demon had its claws in."

"Where's Merrill?" Garrett staggers forward, stepping over the bodies strewn along the path. 

"Shit, I don't know, I lost track. Fenris was with her, they went downslope." Varric trails him as he begins to run.

He finds her at the foot of the path, her slim form at the tip of a whirlwind of destruction. Trees are uprooted, the ground is broken and still heaving with slowly-writhing spiked roots. Merrill is kneeling, holding a grey-haired elhven man in her arms and rocking back and forth. Her staff is cast aside. 

Fenris stands off to one side, one hand clamped over his ribs. He glances at Garrett. "You live." His shoulders relax minutely. 

"Daisy?" Varric asks, hesitant.

She looks up. Her face is dazed, almost empty. 

"Merrill," Garrett starts, but can't find anything to put after it. 

Her eyes track toward him. She blinks, looks confused, and then looks down again. 

It's Ilen, Garrett sees now, his face slack in death, his body torn and twisted. Garrett looks to where the roots are subsiding. _Ah, Maker._

"Put him down, now, Daisy," says Varric. "We need to go."

Merrill clutches the body closer, painting blood across her hands and clothing. Her mouth opens, soundless for a moment, and then the noise that comes out of her is like that of an animal in pain, like something wounded that wants to die. It rises and skirls, too large for her body, too terrible to bear.

"Venhedis," Fenris curses. "She's gone mad."

"Daisy," Varric chokes on a sob, harsh and painful.

Garrett drops his sword, takes three steps, and clocks her on the side of her head. She slumps, her wail cut off, and he catches her gently. 

"Varric," he says. His voice is a scrape. "Come get the - come take the body." They untangle her from her clansman together. Garrett cradles her against his chest, her face pale and still, her mouth slightly open. He turns his back on the carnage and begins the walk back to Kirkwall. 

Mercifully, she doesn't wake.


	14. N is for Nug

"Varric, what is this?" Merrill examines the grey-brown hunk of _something_ speared on the tines of her fork dubiously.

"Stone food," says Varric. "Pass the mushrooms, would you Hawke?"

"Stone food? As in, food made of stone, or food for stones?" Merrill sniffs at it and scrunches up her nose.

"As in, good home dwarf cooking, make you tough and strong," says Varric. "It's stewed nug, and if you don't want it, pass it over."

Merrill curls forward over her bowl protectively. "I didn't say that!"

"Is it polite, in Dalish society, to critique the meal your host offers you?" Aveline continues to tuck her portion away in an efficient manner.

"Well, no," says Merrill. "But I'm hardly a guest anymore, Varric made me wash the floor the other night."

"The rest of us take our boots off at the door, Daisy, it's only fair."

"Good point," says Hawke. He reaches out and scoops up the last of the lichen salad. It's a bit bitter, but he's absolutely eaten worse.

"Fenris doesn't wear -" Merrill starts.

"I would pay money," says Isabela, "to watch Varric tell Fenris to scrub a floor. Where is he, anyway?"

Hawke sighs. "I did invite him," he says to Varric. "He threw a bottle at me. I think he's still a bit - troubled after all that business with that Hadriana woman."

"What is a nug?" Merrill asks. She takes a very small bite and chews dubiously.

"I knew a woman who had one as a pet, once," says Isabela.

"What, on the surface? They're a bit hard to keep aboveground, they sunburn like an Orlesian princeling," Varric says.

"She called it Schmooples. Adorable little thing, all nuzzles and squeaking." Isabela smirks. "The nug was cute, too."

"They're cute?" Merrill regards her fork, now empty, with dismay.

"Aren't your people hunters?" Anders asks. "Surely you don't only eat the ugly animals."

"I wouldn't eat someone's _pet_ , Anders," Merrill says.

"This was no one's pet, alright?" Varric lifts another huge spoonful. "It was raised in a pen with a hundred other nugs and never felt the loving touch of an owner's hand."

"That's not really better," says Merrill.

Isabela slings an arm around her shoulders. "Eat up, sweetling. Good food in the company of friends is not a boon to be wasted."

Merrill sighs and wipes up nug juice with a heel of bread. 

Hawke smiles at the lot of them and raises his mug. Decent beer in it, for once, courtesy of a brewer in Uptown. The least he could do. "Happy nameday, Varric." The rest of them clamour agreement as Varric waves both hands in protest. "You had to throw your own party but at least we showed up."

"It's a tragedy," says Varric, grinning. "On both accounts."


End file.
